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Finding the Current Population of Players on Your Server Through Housing

Last month I started a thread here remarking on how many houses were taken and recording numbers from then to see how many houses free up (and show how many players have come and gone over the last 6ish years). What I did not realize until writing this post is that, with the foreclosures all gone through, you can also get an estimate (or, if you're really bored, a fairly accurate number) of just how many active/semi-active players there are on your server through counting houses... jump to conclusions below to find the estimates for Landroval and Elendilmir, and below that for directions on just how to find this estimate.

I waited for all houses to go with the original foreclosure and server restarts, as well as a little while for everyone to pick up a new house and for their old house to go back up on the market... and here is what I got for how much neighborhoods opened up.

I ended up making rough estimations to save my brain. With a racial neighborhood with 150 neighborhoods on the broker, I ended counted the first 15 neighborhoods on the housing broker, then multiplied by 10. A neighborhood with 252 on the broker, counted first 25, multipled by 10. One with 139, counted 14, multiplied by 10... and so on. Here are the rough estimates:

The kin house numbers, as shown by Elendilmir, are widely inaccurate; the sample size per neighborhood and the number of neighborhoods is likely not high enough.

A couple new neighborhoods opened on Elendilmir between the few weeks that followed its original counting; only one neighborhood entirely filled up. On Landroval, only 8 neighborhoods entirely filled up, because even kinship neighborhoods very often had empty kin houses as neighbors. Solution-- allow individuals to buy a kin house as a personal house for a TP unlock cost?

This is, to my knowledge, the first time houses have ever been foreclosed on players entirely. The results above can be shown it was sorely needed.

In the last (near) 6 years, Elendilmir had, then lost, an estimated 8378 players who bought a house.

In the last (near) 6 years, Landroval had, then lost, an estimated 10389 players who bought a house.

Naturally the above 'totals' do not account for any multi-boxers who owned more than one house, and the number of neighborhoods in total shows that there was plenty of new players throughout the years since neighborhoods opened as houses filled up, with an original neighborhood cap of 325 (Brandywine now has more neighborhoods added to their system).

There are an estimated 7406 players who've logged on to pay upkeep in the last few months on Elendilmir. This number does not account for multi-boxers and of course players who don't own houses.

There are an estimated 10658 players who've logged on to pay upkeep in the last few months on Landroval. This number does not account for multi-boxers and of course players who don't own houses.

How to estimate how many players are at least semi-active on your server (through houses):

1. Go to a housing portal. Count all the neighborhoods that you can enter.
2. Go to that housing broker. Count all the neighborhoods with houses still available. For more accuracy, uncheck 'kinship houses'. Keep kinship houses unchecked throughout the rest of this process.
3. Subtract the difference between neighborhoods you can enter, and neighborhoods with houses to buy. That number, multiply by 26. This will be added in later.
4. At the housing broker, decide how rough or accurate of an estimate you want. The more neighborhoods in that list you count, the more accurate the number, but the more time you'll spend doing it. I went with multiples of 10, as listed at the beginning of this post. So if the Elves on my server have 153 open neighborhoods to buy houses, I'll count the houses in 15 neighborhoods and multiply those results by 10. If you go by a lower number than 10, it will be more accurate... if you go with a higher number, it will be less accurate. The multiple number in the below directions I'll mark with an asterisk (*); if you're using a multiple other than 10, you just put your number where there asterisk is.

5. For standards: Multiply the number of neighborhoods you're counting first by 16, then multiply that number by 10*. Write it down, this is the total. Then count all the standard houses available at the broker for the neighborhoods you're counting. That number, multiply by 10*. Now you want to subtract this second number from the total you just found before. The number you get is the estimated number of all standard houses taken by players in that racial area.
6. For deluxes: Multiply the number of neighborhoods you're counting first by 10, then multiply that number by 10*. Write it down, this is the total. Then count all the deluxe houses available at the broker for the neighborhoods you're counting. That number, multiply by 10*. Again, subtract this second number from the total you just found a moment ago. The answer you get is the estimated number of all deluxe houses taken by players in that racial area.
7. Add the results from (3), (5), and (6) all together. The total is the estimated amount of player houses taken in that racial area.
8. Repeat (1) through (7) for the three other neighborhoods.

9. Once you have the four racial areas done, add the four numbers together. That's how many player houses are taken by players on your server, estimated... and so an estimated number of at least semi-active players on your server. This does not account for multi-boxers with more than one house, nor for players without a player house.

This is not a good way either in finding out the population per server. There are players who have multiple houses. I have 7 on 2 servers. Also not everyone who plays this game has a house.

You know how I know you didn't read the post (or at least not very carefully)? I addressed both things more than once in the post, and was very clear in saying this was a rough estimating system, for lack of anything else. It is NOT meant to be a precise number. It's an estimate. Good day

This is an interesting methodology. However, rather than sampling the first 10% of housing neighborhoods alphabetically, I think it would have been more accurate to sample every 10th neighborhood. (Or even better, have random.org choose which neighborhoods to sample.)

The reason I say this is because I suspect players are more likely to choose homes in neighborhoods near the very top of the list -- and to a lesser extent, at the very bottom -- rather than somewhere in the middle. (A similar bias exists in many other areas of social science.)

This is an interesting methodology. However, rather than sampling the first 10% of housing neighborhoods alphabetically, I think it would have been more accurate to sample every n/10th neighborhood. (Or even better, have random.org choose which neighborhoods to sample.)

The reason I say this is because I suspect players are more likely to choose homes in neighborhoods near the very top of the list -- and to a lesser extent, at the very bottom -- rather than somewhere in the middle. (A similar bias exists in many other areas of social science.)

While I would usually agree with this, the recent expulsion of years of players over the last five years seemed to even out the neighborhoods entirely, because I was finding mostly filled neighborhoods all over the list and mostly empty neighborhoods all over the list in all neighborhoods on both servers. The fact that houses came up completely randomly back onto the market rather than alphabetically helped to further randomize it if people were going for a certain location in any neighborhood. Rather it seemed that, for the most case, the most filled neighborhoods were kinship neighborhoods and neighborhoods that very recently opened up on that server, which appeared all over the alphabet.

I do agree that, a year or two from now, taking such a sample size would probably be more prudent.

A couple new neighborhoods opened on Elendilmir between the few weeks that followed its original counting; only one neighborhood entirely filled up. On Landroval, only 8 neighborhoods entirely filled up, because even kinship neighborhoods very often had empty kin houses as neighbors. Solution-- allow individuals to buy a kin house as a personal house for a TP unlock cost?

I established a personal kinhouse by making an alt kin, and using two new F2P accounts to get the number of kinmembers up to 8. You have to run two instances of the client at once, one with the leader/officer giving the invites, the other with the prospected alts accepting membership.

Once you've set things up give your main all rights to the kinhouse and he'll be able to do most stuff, except mailbox and use storebought guard if you have those.